zdl_cryptofandomcom-20200214-history
ZCash (ZEC)
Basics * Privacy coin based on ZK-Snarks. * Has been forked many times, notable ones are Horizen and ZCoin. * Got delisted on many exchanges including from OKEx as it violates new FATF regulations. * Had to pay off a developer to avoid a blockchain hardfork; this came after the sole windows client maintaner, D. Jane Mercer, effectively threatened to split the network if he was not paid in return; this sent some in the Zcash community into a frenzy. (25-6-2018) Background * From Token Tuesdays (18-9-2019): "Originally launched as “Zerocoin” in 2014, Zcash has evolved into one of the leading privacy-protecting digital assets on the market today. The motivation behind Zcash originally derived from the inability of Bitcoin and other major digital assets to provide strong privacy guarantees. While Bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous by nature, many details surrounding the transactions on the ledger are completely public. Information such as the sending address, receiving address, amount sent and anything in the memo field is viewable to anyone. This information ultimately leaves digital crumbs for anyone to find every time you interact with the network." Difference with Bitcoin * From Token Tuesdays (18-9-2019): "Given that Zcash was a fork of Bitcoin, it has very similar network economic properties. Like Bitcoin, Zcash has a total supply of 21,000,000 ZEC where block rewards are halved every 4 years. However, ZEC has a few differentiating properties from BTC. Rather than 10 minute block times that begin with 50 BTC block reward, Zcash leverages 2.5-minute blocks with 12.5 ZEC per block. This ultimately allows Zcash to have a higher throughput capacity than BTC at the cost of security. In addition, Zcash has implemented a “founder’s reward” which has taken some criticism for the crypto community at large. For more on the founders reward, check below at Governance. Tech * Uses the Equihash mining algorithm. * In Zcash, there are two types of addresses, "transparent" and "shielded." The transparent addresses and the amounts sent to and from them show up on the blockchain as they would in bitcoin. But if a user opts to use a shielded address, it will be obscured on the public ledger. And if both the sender and receiver of funds have opted to use shielded addresses, the amount sent will be encrypted as well. * By default, transactions are public. If a user wants to make a shielded transaction, they must do so through the wallet interface and pay the associated transaction fee. More bellow. * Had flaws in their anonymity that have since been fixed — researchers were able to associate 69% of Zcash shielded transactions with founders/miners. * Again someone found flaws. This time by researchers at Stanford who according to Proof of Work #77 (23-10-2019): "Presented two types of active side-channel attacks against private (a.k.a. shielded) transactions in Zcash. This Security announcement has been shared earlier this month in the Zcash community forum. Be sure to upgrade your nodes to Version 2.0.7-3 immediately and discontinue use of older versions. Please note that the issue does not put funds at risk of theft or counterfeiting." * Zcashd will have (30-1-2020) new releases approximately every six weeks and there will be roughly two network upgrades per year. * Has an alternative client called Zebra, by the ZCash Foundation and Parity Move to PoS * A member of the community, rebekah31, proposed a ZIP (19-8-2019) (ZCash Improvement Proposal), which provides for the transition from the Proof of Work to the Proof of Stake model. Zooko then did propose to switch to PoS if the community agreed. Moving into 2020 it seems like Zcash will move towards Casper, however some community members had their doubts (9-2019) on the plan: "1. Would ECC and ZF run Validators with their relatively large allotment of tokens? 2. What degree of token distribution do you think is needed to create a smoothly operating PoS network? 3. Has anyone figured out a method to use Zaddrs for Validators? 4. Would issuance decrease? @fubuloubu" Transaction types * From Token Tuesdays (18-9-2019): "With Zcash, there are two types of addresses: z-addresses and t-addresses. Z-addresses are private addresses where as t-addresses are public addresses. These two address types are interoperable and create four main types of possible transactions on the network. Private (Z-address to z-address): Appears on a public blockchain, so the transaction is known to occur and fees are paid. However, the addresses, the transaction amount and the memo field are all encrypted and not publicly visible. Deshielding (z-address to t-address): The sending address is shielded and cannot be seen by the public. However, the amount received (which is the amount sent) and the address of the recipient becomes viewable by the public. Shielding (t-address to z-address): The amount sent and the sending address is publicly available. However, the recipient and their account information has a high degree of privacy guarantees. Public (t -address to t-address): This is identical to a normal Bitcoin transaction where both the sender and recipient addresses, the amount transacted, and anything in the memo field is known." Governance and Founders Reward * From Zooko's twitter: "In response to gentle but firm pressure from the Zcash community, the Electric Coin Company has been investigating the possibility of converting to a non-profit" Founders Reward turning into shared Mining Reward Fund * From Token Tuesdays (18-9-2019): "Zcash has implemented a “founder’s reward” which has taken some criticism for the crypto community at large. Zcash’s founder's reward takes 20% of the newly issued ZEC in every block for the first 850,000 blocks (~4 years) and issues them to the owners and employees of the Electric Coin Company (formerly the Zcash Company). The Founder’s Reward ultimately results in 10% of the total supply going to the stakeholders of the development company. Following the first halving, the founder’s reward will cease and all block rewards will go to miners." * Then, half a year after the launch, a portion of the Founder’s Reward was donated (mainly by Zooko and his family) to create the non-profit Zcash Foundation. * In 11-2019 the Zcash Foundation held a poll on wether to change the 20% allocation. According (5-12-2019) to the Electric Coin Company "The Zcash Community is in favor of continuing to fund Zcash development, and the proposals that have the most community support call for a development fund that is 20% of the issuance. The main differences between these proposals lie in how that 20% is allocated and controlled. In the forum poll, both older and newer accounts showed the same preferences. The miners did not signal their preferences. The final ratification step will occur in October 2020, when all miners, users and coin holders who support the changes will choose to run software that implements the new rules." * From CoinDesk (7-11-2019): "At least four independent entrepreneurs and venture capitalists submitted their own public proposals for the network’s October 2020 upgrade, when the original founders’ reward funding mechanism will expire. “The unique governance model in zcash is that it’s community-driven and it’s self-funding,” Wilcox said. “Anything that’s not self-funding is at risk of capture.”" The Self Funding remark could be taken with a grain of salt, since it is not a funding mechanism to a decentralised on chain governance system, but a hardcoded contract to the founders. "Several proposals suggest the new developer fund should be managed by a new, third-party council with rotating members determined by democratic voting. According to Zcash Foundation communications manager Sonya Mann, roughly 64 community members participated in electing the foundation’s board in 2018, which took considerable outreach and work on the nonprofit’s part." * From a blog post by ECC (28-1-2020): "The development fund will be distributed to ECC (7 percent of mining rewards), the Zcash Foundation (5 percent of mining reward) and an additional fund to be used for grants to support third-party Zcash efforts (8 percent of mining rewards)." Trademark Issues * From this article (3-9-2019): “There is a legal battle for the use of the trademark. The Electric Coin Company (ECC) has, in fact, discontinued negotiations for brand sharing with the ZCash Foundation (Zfnd) The ECC, as confirmed by Wilcox in an official note, is currently the only trademark holder that has been registered in several countries. Discussions concerned the introduction of a double veto on the use of the trademark by ECC and Zfnd, but no agreement was reached and negotiations were suspended, so to date, ECC remains the sole owner. The ZCash Foundation did not hide its disappointment and said it was surprised and dismayed by this decision. They then announced that the NU4 upgrade would be postponed until an agreement was reached.” And of course Fluffypony responded on the situation: “The Electric Scam Company decides not to hand the ZCash trademark over to the ZCash Floundation, which means that if they aren’t given a new Founders Reward they can just decide to fork ZCash and prevent the original chain from calling itself ZCash. Hashtag decentralised” * On 7-11-2019 it got resolved with ZCC handing over the trademark to the Foundation. "In the spirit of transparency, you can read the full agreement here. Some items of interest and import are summarized below. Rights to the trademark: The foundation grants non-exclusive trademark rights back to ECC, and both parties will be required to sign off on any other party’s request to license or use the trademark. Network upgrades: Under this new agreement, as mentioned above, both parties must agree on any network upgrade that is intended to create the new consensus protocol of Zcash. If the parties disagree, and the disagreement cannot be resolved before activation of the network upgrade, the chain splits and neither implementation — neither the new one nor the existing one — can be called Zcash. If this happens, both the Zcash Foundation and ECC could lose trademark rights related to the Zcash name. And while each party would have the right to advocate for the adoption of its preferred implementation of the blockchain, they will have to do so using different currency names, ticker symbols and logos. Stewardship: The Zcash Foundation is responsible for the upkeep and protection of the Zcash trademark. If it neglects this duty (e.g., if applications are not filed, if records are not properly maintained, or if infringements are not pursued), ECC, with proper notice, has the right to step in and assume these responsibilities. Even so, the trademark would remain with the foundation, unless breach of contract could be proven. Termination: Either party can voluntarily terminate the agreement, in which case trademark rights would be awarded to the other. In the case of ECC or Zcash Foundation bankruptcy, or failure of the foundation to maintain nonprofit status, or a validated breach of contract by one party, rights would be awarded to the other party. Community voice: Neither party is permitted to take actions that are blatantly contrary to the clear consensus of the Zcash community. “Clear consensus” will be determined by evidence agreed to by both parties. If there is a disagreement, it will be handled according to dispute resolution requirements in the contract. Digital assets: For the time being, ECC will continue to maintain and support the z.cash website, z.cash domain name, @zcash Twitter account, and other Zcash social media accounts and news distribution services." * From CoinDesk (7-11-2019): "To (Zooko), the trademark agreement is a sign of the project “rapidly moving to a status where I don’t have the power to make something happen or stop it from happening.” However, it’s hard to imagine what the nonprofit would look like completely separated from ECC, since zcash founders are now its main source of funding." Pro's * Its tech is widely respected and is being used in many other projects (Ethereum for instance), further showing the quality. Con's * Is as of now (10-2019) a 'one-trick-pony'. Other more diverse projects are taking over the ZK-tech. Which means ZCash could get left behind. * "The majority of users are using the regular, public transaction between t-addresses to transact on the network. It is important to note that by default, transactions are public. If a user wants to make a shielded transaction, they must do so through the wallet interface and pay the associated transaction fee." * Had trouble between ECC and the Zcash Foundation over the trademark. Did get solved after months of negotiations. * A study published in August 2019 by Electric Capital found less than 40 developers were regularly contributing to zcash. (By comparison, the study found bitcoin routinely has more than 100 contributing developers and ethereum has roughly 1,200 developers.) Team, investors, etc. Team * "Goodbye, Zcash Company. Hello, Electric Coin Company. We announced a name change yesterday, read more about why we made this decision.Only the name has changed. We are the same team" (3-2019) * Wilcox, Zooko; founder * 'Paige' * Jill Carlson; advisor * Miller, Andrew; advisor, Foundation Board Member * Josh Cincinnati; Zcash Foundation director * Has some old VTC devs on the team * Nerayoff, Steven; advisor * Has had creators coming from UC Berkeley, Technion and John Hopkins University * Gets consultancy from Jia Tian * Has a Community Advisory Panel (list from Q4 2019) Investors * "Back in 2014 at the very inception of what is known today as Zcash, the Zcash Company raised $1M in seed funding. In exchange for this funding, investors would receive a portion of the founder’s reward." * Morehead, Dan; investor through Pantera * Ver, Roger; first investor * Digital Currency Group; Investor, the CEO Barry Silbert itself also * Is one of the investments chosen by Grayscale, owned by DCG (Grayscale also owns 1% of the BTC supply) * Fenbushi Capital; Investor * Pantera Capital; investor * Anthony Di Iorio: investor * London Trust Media (Private Internet Access VPN); Investor * Ravikant, Naval; Founder and CEO of AngelList, Investor * Davenport, Ben; Founder and CTO at Bitgo, investor * Chain; all co-founders are investors * Rop Gonggrijp, investor * Voorhees, Erik; Investor, its company ShapeShift is invested as well * Ehrsam, Fred; co-founder of Coinbase, Investor * Li, Xiaolai; Investor Partnerships * Is a sponsor of Coin Center * Has worked with Startup Studio (7-2019) * Works together with Ethereum to get ZK-Snarks implemented in Ether * Is a 'friend' of Polkadot (made by Parity) * The Zcash Foundation is partnering with Parity to create the first Zcash node software that isn't built or managed by the Zerocoin Electric Coin Company; the company will have two engineers devoted to building this new zcash node and hiring four more. Category:Coins/Tokens